Multiscale analysis of the 7 December 1998 Great Salt Lake-effect snowstorm

The large-scale and mesoscale structure of the Great Salt Lake-effect snows torm of 7 December 1998 is examined using radar analyses, high-density surf ace observations, conventional meteorological data, and a simulation by the Pennsylvania State University-National Center for Atmospheric Research fif th generation Mesoscale Model (MM5). Environmental conditions during the ev ent were characterized by a lake-700-hPa temperature difference of up to 22 .5 degreesC, a lake-land temperature difference as large as 10 degreesC, an d conditionally unstable low-level lapse rates. The primary snowband of the event formed along a land-breeze front near the west shoreline of the Grea t Salt Lake. The snowband then migrated eastward and merged with a weaker s nowband as the land-breeze front moved eastward, offshore flow developed fr om the eastern shoreline, and low-level convergence developed near the midl ake axis. Snowfall accumulations reached 36 cm and were heaviest in a narro w, 10-km-wide band that extended downstream from the southern shore of the Great Salt Lake. Thus, although the Great Salt Lake is relatively small in scale compared to the Great Lakes, it is capable of inducing thermally driv en circulations and banded precipitation structures similar to those observ ed in lake-effect regions of the eastern United States and Canada.